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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29818311">Something In Between</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginsbergsunflowers/pseuds/ginsbergsunflowers'>ginsbergsunflowers</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Smoke Signals [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Walking Dead (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, Family Fluff, Implied/Referenced Body Dysphoria, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Light Angst, Other, Referenced/Implied Religious Trauma, Romantic Fluff, Stranger Things was a comic book series before a tv show in this universe, and Bloodwitch is a real band, but would a coming of age story really be complete without them, coping with the trauma of growing up in the apocalypse, excessive pop culture references</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 19:35:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,317</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29818311</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginsbergsunflowers/pseuds/ginsbergsunflowers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“This is as far as I go,” they tell him. “Go up to the second level — there should be signs on the exits in the stairwell. Hopefully you’ll cross paths with your people, but at the very least you’ll end up on the same level as they should be. Now, three bullets please.” They hold out their hand. “If they heard the gunshots yesterday they’ll want to know from who and why, and you’ll say it was you, but I saw you have limited ammo and you wouldn’t be missing any… so... three bullets, please. Consider it payment.”</p><p>Carl gives them three bullets from his gun. They are both smiling. It’s a little extreme of a cover story, but he gives the bullets anyway and finds he wanted to — like the missing bullets in his gun were proof he hadn't gone crazy down here and imagined up a rather attractive and impressive and smart person with great taste in music and comics and hobbies.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Carl Grimes/Original Character(s), Daryl Dixon/Jesus, Enid/Original Female Character(s), Ezekiel/Carol Peletier, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Past Lori Grimes/Rick Grimes - Relationship, Rick Grimes/Michonne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Smoke Signals [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2191917</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Angry Glass Half Full</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They found the pamphlet at a remote bus stop they had pulled over to in order to raid the vending machine beside it. The bus stop was a small thing; a metal bench covered by a dirty hard plastic awning, a vending machine to one side and a map of bus routes behind a person-high plexiglass sign. On either side of the map were small cubbies where pamphlets and smaller bus route directories were tucked away — though most had been weathered into illegibility, ink and colors bled together and paper wrinkled and torn and sun faded.</p><p>“You’re not going into the city, Carl,” Rick says matter of factly. They had brought the pamphlet advertising a nearby town back with them, and a small group has gathered around the Grimes’ kitchen table to discuss its potential. </p><p>The booklet contains several unfoldable maps depicting the extensive tunnels that span beneath the sprawling town. Pulled out, they could be layered atop one another to better show how the underground systems intersect. </p><p>The town, Cherrywood, is only a little younger than Virginia itself — according to the brief historical summary on the inside page of the pamphlet — and the tunnels beneath the town had been originally built in war times, extended upon during prohibition for speakeasies and alcohol smuggling, and as modern technology integrated into the town, built into further, connecting sewer systems to a power station plant and more. Most eye-catching to the group however are the tunnels leading to Cherrywood’s original hospital — in the process of being closed up for its rebuilding, the pamphlet explains — as well as passages to the town’s only school campus. Simply put, they had found a map to a gold mine. </p><p>The communities have run low on the supplies they can’t make themselves, and most small towns and houses have been ransacked already. But no one goes into the cities anymore, and for good reason. The dead remain in large numbers in urban areas, but if they could traverse the large town underground they might have a good shot at avoiding the hoards and finding the goods people hadn’t had time to grab in the initial outbreak — the supplies left behind sitting there, waiting for someone to take.</p><p>It’s still a dangerous mission of course, but the opportunity looks too good to not at least investigate.</p><p>“I’m the one who found it!” Carl fumes.</p><p>“And we’re very lucky you did, son, but that’s no excuse — we have no idea what to expect.”</p><p>“What does it matter? We’re going to be traveling underground the whole time. That’s the whole point in giving the place a shot, isn’t it?” Carl bargons. “‘Chonne will be there, you know she’d never let anything happen to me, I’ll be fine.”</p><p>“Woah, woah, woah, do not drag me into this one.” Michonne leans back in her chair, arms crossing. “Of course I’ll keep you close if you come, but I’m not exactly sold on you going either, Carl.”</p><p>Carl sputters and strains to keep himself collected. “Haven’t I proven I’m ready for this kind of stuff yet? I’ve been going on bigger and riskier runs for over a year now.”</p><p>“I say let him go,” Daryl speaks up. He shrugs when Rick throws him a bewildered look, and he props his heels up on the table. “He can look after himself better than you give the kid credit for, and if things get dicey we’ll turn around and bring him back and make the trip without him some other time. But if things go alright then we have one more person to take on long scavenges like this when one of us can’t go. Jesus ain’t going to be back from Hilltop for at least another week, and we can’t have you and Michonne and me all leave Alexandria — one of us has to stay, but we need an even number. And I think Carl’s the next best.”</p><p> </p><p>The population sign reads 12,785 — barely legible through the dirt and debris as they pass it entering Cherrywood.</p><p>They park on the far outskirts of the town, near a sewer plant where they can enter the tunnels from and close enough to the woods to hide the cars amongst the dense trees and bushes. The group of four had assigned partners to ensure everyone’s back would be covered, as they always do when leaving the walls. Michonne, unsurprisingly, with Carl, and Daryl with Tara. They had decided to keep the scavenge group small — it’s easier to escape a sticky situation with fewer people to worry about, and it makes for better stealth while traveling. The plan they had agreed on was to return with more hands if they find a complete jackpot, but for now, a low profile is safest.</p><p>According to the maps, if they follow the main sewer line in they’ll come across the water run off systems, and from there they’ll pass over a power station a few floors below, and eventually the tunnels will turn into the abandoned original mortuary of the hospital — their first priority. If they only manage to make it out with medicine and other medical equipment they can consider it a win.</p><p>Their bedrolls and food are packed to last them a few days. They estimate it to take them at least a day to navigate their way to the hospital and back while carrying the new supplies, and another day to reap the school of books and information and anything else useful they may find. </p><p>The tunnels are easy enough to follow — at first. They had studied the map repeatedly before ever leaving Alexandria, and realized that the smaller, narrower tunnels branching off from the main one would make great shortcuts and save them possibly hours worth of walking. But when they arrive at the first smaller tunnel, it’s blocked off. </p><p>Michonne and Daryl pause to reassess the map and figure out which way to change course. Their whispered voices melt into the susurrous echoes within the tunnels — no groans of the dead or shuffling of feet, but instead an omnipresent hush in the stones as though the tunnel itself was sighing in its unmovable deep sleep, only broken by the occasional trickle and drip of water. </p><p>Carl steps up to the blocked tunnel entrance while his family argues quietly behind him. Thick metal bars are embedded from the top of the stone archway to the bottom of the concrete floor. Beyond the bars he can make out the slope in the center floor for water to run in, and what might be passageways on the left and right far at the end, or maybe it’s the dark playing tricks on him. </p><p>Carl places his hands on the bars and sighs at their solidness. It’s tempting… they are almost wide enough a thin, scrawny person could fit through. He drops his backpack to the ground and turns to the side. He slides an arm and a shoulder through. The bars press coldly into his chest and he sucks in.</p><p>“Uhh, Carl,” Tara gapes.</p><p>Carl slips a leg through the bars and fights for traction with the foot on the slick floor and presses further.</p><p>“Guys,” Tara says louder.</p><p>Michonne and Daryl look up in time to see Carl stumble through the bars, his hat getting knocked to the ground as he passes through.</p><p>“Carl Grimes, what the hell do you think you’re doing!” Michonne whispers scathingly.</p><p>Carl glances around in disbelief before meeting Michonne’s angry eyes. “There’s got to be another way in somewhere. If we find it it’ll save almost a day’s worth of time. I’ll explore ahead — not very far! — and if I don’t find anything I’ll come back and we’ll only have wasted, like, not even an hour.” Carl swipes his hat from between the bars and settles it back onto his head.</p><p>Michonne grits her teeth. “Gun out, you understand me? Don’t take any chances. Set your watch alarm to go off in thirty minutes, and we’ll set ours. Come back when it goes off no matter if you’ve found something or not — we’ll assume something’s happened if you aren’t back and come looking as fast as we can, okay?”</p><p>Carl nods along and sets the alarm on his watch in time with the one on Tara’s wrist, then he takes out his gun and turns to face the dark tunnel. He aims his light low to not alert whatever walkers might be down here. The ceiling is narrower than the main tunnel, but not so much he has to crouch — if he extends his arm all the way up and tiptoes, Carl figures his fingers would easily brush the stones. </p><p>He stops when he reaches the far wall and sweeps his light around. The channel in the floor splits off to the left and right toward identical looking tunnels. On instinct he glances behind himself as well — the light from his entrance has shrunk to the size of a penny. Carl recalls from studying the map that left will lead East, toward the power stations and city generators — the direction they needed to go past. But that doesn’t help if he can’t find a way for the others to get in. So he turns right, and ten steps in he begins to notice a shimmer of light far off. </p><p>Carl picks up his pace, checking the walls for doors or passageways, but he finds none and sticks to chasing the light at the other end. The water in the floor channel is barely more than a thin stream that his shoes splash in, but as he nears the light the sound of water grows louder. </p><p>The tunnel leads out to a bright cavernous room. The smell of rain and leaves and mold hits his nose. A row of windows at the top of one wall illuminate the space; dust columned sunlight reflects off the dark water far at the bottom of the room — a fall that makes Carl’s stomach drop to look at and has him bracing a hand against the concrete wall. There’s no telling how deep the water might be, if it’d be enough to break the fall. </p><p>A foot below his tunnel sits a wide metal grated platform, along with several others around the room, though most of them are rusted and warped from years of neglect. Carl places a foot on the platform, slowly putting more of his weight on it, testing it’s constitution. The stilted grate vibrates with his movement, but nothing else — not so much as even shaking or tilting. Carl takes a slow deep breath and walks a few slow steps onto it to better see the room. </p><p>Along the walls are other tunnel offshoots as well as concrete pipes jutting into the room much closer to the water below him. The pipes spill stronger streams of water into the pool at the floor, and the pool lazily disappears into a wide, low tunnel on the far side of the room. Carl hears the splash of a short waterfall and figures that the low tunnel leads to some kind of drop with even deeper water or sewage. </p><p>To the left of that runoff drain is two fenced off areas with chain link doors — one with some kind of crane mechanism and behind the other is a heavy looking blue door with signs on it. He can’t make out what they read from his platform, but he can spy the same symbols they’ve been seeing for the past few hours in the sewer systems. It has to connect, the only issue being the door appears locked from his side. If he could make it across the other grates stilted across the room he’s sure he could figure out a way to unlock it.</p><p>Carl checks his watch. Only a few minutes remain before the alarm will sound so he returns his gun to its holster and he heads back. </p><p>Michonne, Daryl, and Tara are standing around waiting in various states of impatience and concern until Carl’s light cuts through the dark tunnel, and they rush over to the bars to meet him.</p><p>He tells them about the room he found.</p><p>“Here, on the map,” Michonne says, her finger tapping the paper where the main tunnel morphs into a hallway that leads to a large empty square amongst the lines. “That’s got to be it. We’ll check it out, and if we can’t figure a way in we’ll just call it a loss and move on, yeah?” She meets everyone’s eyes, making sure they all agree on the plan.</p><p>“I’ll go the way I came,” Carl says. “We might need someone on the other side of that gate to get it open.”</p><p>The group quickly goes over the what-ifs, and Daryl throws Carl’s bag that won’t fit through the bars onto his shoulder and they break apart. Carl heads back through the tunnel to the right and waits at the exit like Michonne had said to. It’s not long before the blue metal door behind the fence budges in its frame and bursts open.</p><p>Carl has to resist the urge to cheer, afraid his voice will echo in the large room and down the tunnels and wake otherwise unseen walkers up. Michonne smiles back at him as the three step into the caged landing in the room. </p><p>“Good on you, kid,” Tara laughs, “now come open this door.” She rattles the chain link door in it’s misleadingly sturdy frame. </p><p>“Careful,” Michonne warns Carl. “The legs don’t look too sturdy on some of those.”</p><p>Carl steps down from his tunnel as gently as he can. The next metal grate is another foot or so lower and it vibrates with his impact for an uneasy moment, but it remains unmoved. Three more platforms span between him and the cage, each one slightly lower — like huge steps — and each is increasingly warped. Several of the stilted legs are rusted and lean at incorrect angles from years of running water and the lack of maintenance. </p><p>Carl is light on his feet but the platforms shake and reverberate with each step anyway. The last two platforms are more damaged than the others — the metal has warped and bent away from each other, creating a wide gap, and as Carl takes a large stride and his full weight shifts to the last landing, it creaks. A leg collapses beneath the platform and the whole thing tilts. </p><p>Carl wavers and makes a grab for the platform behind him, but he can’t catch a grip fast enough. Gravity shifts around him, and he falls. </p><p>The water is deep enough to break his fall, but just barely.</p><p>The others shout and rampage against the gated door, stealth out the window, but the fence refuses to give.</p><p>“CARL!” Michonne calls out, panic clear in her voice.</p><p>Carl surfaces and sputters, trying to catch his breath without swallowing the water dripping down his face. He can feel the ground beneath the toes of his shoes if he lets the water up to his jaw, but he wades to keep the stench away from his mouth and nose. </p><p>“I’m okay! I’m not hurt!” He shouts up to them.</p><p>Michonne jostles the gate again but it only rattles and clunks loudly. Carl looks up around him for some way out of the drain water, but the remaining platforms are far too high for him to even attempt to reach. </p><p>“Alright, new plan,” Carl shouts to them. “You guys take the long way around — even if you find a way passed the gate there’s no good way to get me up without endangering someone else.”</p><p>“Stay close, okay?” Michonne’s fingers tighten around the chain link with frustration. “We’ll back track and find a different entrance and get you. Do not wander around alone. We will come to you, understand?”</p><p>Carl begins to swim toward one of the narrow tunnels at the edge of the water.</p><p>“Carl, I said stay close!”</p><p>“I will! But I can’t stay in this water while I wait. I’ll stay close. Just… closer in a dry place.” It’ll be past nightfall by the time they reach him, and that’s if they don’t run into any other problems. “I’ll be fine for a day alright? Don’t, like, take your time, but it’s not like I’m dying here so there’s no need to freak out. I can look out for myself for now.”</p><p>Michonne lets out a frustrated groan and the tension in her shoulders grows. </p><p>“Come on,” Daryl interjects and nudges her arm. “We better get going.”</p><p>The three turn back to head to the main tunnel they regret not following in the first place.</p><p>Carl wades to the nearest tunnel trickling water into the pool. It’s much smaller than the one he had been in before, resembling more of a large concrete pipe. He has to hunch to fit in it but he hoists himself up to sit nonetheless. His legs dangle out of the pipe, the toe of his boot brushing the water as he begins his long wait. When he checks his watch barely ten minutes has passed. </p><p>“Alright, I’m bored of this already,” he huffs and draws his legs up to crouch as he enters the pipe. “Where do you lead to, huh?” </p><p>If he finds nothing or only more twisting tunnels he will turn back and return to the drain room, he tells himself, but he has to see if it leads out to somewhere else. What if he ends up closer to the main tunnel? He could save the others the trouble of rescuing him by finding them instead.</p><p>Doubtful, he thinks, but worth a shot. Plus there is nothing better to do.</p><p>The pipe opens into a large drain tunnel like the one he’d gone into earlier. Carl decides to explore it, hoping to find another barred archway that would take him to the rest of the main tunnels they had been in before his little escapade. </p><p>Michonne’s panicked, scathing face rises to his mind, and Carl sighs as guilt nibbles at him for causing her so much worry.</p><p>Carl finds a barred archway and slips through again, his wet clothes making it a lot smoother this time. He’s in a larger, plain concrete tunnel — similar to the main tunnel but slightly narrower. He searches the walls for signs or directions, any hint of where he might be or where to go, but nothing is familiar. He turns around to head back through the bars when a glare of neon pink catches in the beam of his flashlight. A spray painted arrow is marked above the archway. </p><p>Carl steadies his light around the arrow but finds nothing else — he hesitates to dismiss it as mindless graffiti however. He turns around and points his light at the ceiling of the tunnel. A long way down he glimpses more color. He walks to it slowly, gun in hand just below his flashlight, and comes to a yellow spray painted arrow, pointing further into the tunnel. </p><p>He follows it just a little longer. He glances back and the archway is far away but still within sight when he finds more arrows as the tunnel divides. One branch continues forward and another to the right, where he spies cables attached to the ceiling at the end of the hall. Above the intersection are three spray painted arrows: a yellow arrow pointing forward, a white arrow to the right, and a pink one above Carl’s head pointing back the way he came.</p><p>Carl can practically hear Michonne yelling at him to turn around, but he has to see where it goes. He won’t get lost as long as he keeps track of which arrows he follows, Carl reasons. </p><p>He keeps straight and follows the yellow arrow, the simplest way — until more tunnels appear, branching off to the left and right. He passes hallway offshoots and sees doors and more hallways when he sweeps his light down them. Almost every branch is accompanied with an array of yellow and pink and white arrows pointing in the new directions. </p><p>The tunnel leads to a dead end with one hall going left and one going right. A pink arrow points left and a white arrow points right. Carl follows the white arrow. He’s seen the fewest of those so he figures there will be fewer chances he gets his direction mixed up. </p><p>The white arrow leads to a camp, Carl realizes, or a storage spot for one nearby. </p><p>In a concrete hallway full of thick cables and power lines on the walls and ceiling, identical to the hallways he had been passing, is another chain link fenced area. The cage is smaller and doesn’t reach the ceiling like the one in the drain room though. Blankets and miscellaneous fabric are thrown over the chain link walls, blocking the view of what lay behind, but the door gapes open. A pink, orange, and red beaded curtain hangs in the doorway.</p><p>Clever, Carl thinks.</p><p>He stealths closer, gun at the ready. The strands of beads clatter together as Carl gently parts them and he cringes, the sound uncomfortably loud in the otherwise complete silence. </p><p>He lets out a breath when he finds no walkers or people. The space behind the fence is small, just enough room for a few metal storage shelves, a stack of crates, and a couple wooden pallets leaned against the stone wall. The shelves are stocked with miscellaneous items of vague importance — various flashlights, cables and extension cords, batteries, random items that have potential to be made into makeshift weapons or tools. Several spray paint cans and paint buckets sit on the floor beside the crates, but that isn’t particularly surprising when Carl thinks about it. He only glances at the supplies in the crates because something else catches his eye. </p><p>In a narrow gap between two storage shelves, a long blanket hangs from the wall. Carl brushes the blanket aside to reveal a thick metal door. Whatever sign was on it in its previous life has been scraped off. The only marks on it are faded scuffs of rust, or very old blood.</p><p>Carl reaches for the handle, but he hesitates. </p><p>This is clearly someone’s settlement, their camp, or their storage. It doesn’t look so dusty that it could be abandoned either. Whoever’s place this is, they might still be home. </p><p>Carl lets the blanket fall back over the door and he backs out of the little room without taking anything. The last thing he wants is to be caught in a misunderstanding if these supplies haven’t been abandoned. He’d wait and tell the others about it when they reunite, and they can decide what to do from there. But for now, Carl leaves — the swaying beads are the only clue he was ever there. </p><p>He goes back the way he came, following a white arrow pointing backward, and he slowly comes to a stop. The unsettling feeling of being watched trickles over him. </p><p>Carl glances behind at the supply room, barely more than a speck at the end of the hall now, the beads and blankets undisturbed. </p><p>He faces forward and continues on. </p><p>That place is probably why he feels creeped out, he reasons. It happens sometimes when they stumbled across preserved homes or camps while scavenging, when it really sinks in that a place used to be where somebody lived, like their presence lingers even though they’re long gone. </p><p>He reaches the dead end tunnel again and explores the left hallway with the pink arrow. After a few minutes he comes to another split in the path — the way forward is unmarked, but the hall branching off to his right has a yellow spray painted arrow, so he turns that way. </p><p>The hallway is as unremarkable as all the others. There are occasional scuffs of dry blood on the floor and walls, likely from a walker stumbling around, but all marks he sees are old, and any odor of rotting corpses has faded. </p><p>A metal door appears on his left eventually, but it’s locked solid, the metal not even budging when he tries to shove it open. The reflective, deteriorated sign on the door’s front only shows the minimalistic image of a machine with three little lightning bolts coming off of it and reads ‘ENTRANCE PROHIBITED UNLESS AUTHORIZED’. He hears nothing when he puts his ear to the door — no hum of electricity and no groans of the dead. Either the door is soundproof or, more likely, it's empty. He moves on.</p><p>Just as Carl is beginning to wonder if he missed a turn he comes to another divide — both halls are marked with yellow arrows. He groans and stares at them both. How is he supposed to decide when he doesn’t know the difference between the same colored directions? </p><p>In his stillness the feeling of being watched creeps over him again. The back of his neck prickles with the sensation. Carl isn’t sure if the feeling ever left to begin with or if he had just managed to distract himself from it for a while.</p><p>He sweeps his flashlight behind him and finds nothing but an empty hallway, his light narrowly glinting off the sign on the closed door. Carl tells himself he’s just letting the solitude in a dark unfamiliar place get to him. </p><p>He shines his light down the halls with identical yellow arrows, and at the end of the second hallway he spies a heavy blue door. </p><p>All creepy sensations leave him immediately as he jogs to the end of the hall. It opens into a small room with a few other hallway offshoots, but what Carl is after are the three concrete steps with a metal railing that lead up to the blue door. Attached to it is a sign with a universally recognizable white line depicting stairs. He had to have fallen at least two floors if not more, and he just found his way back up. </p><p>Carl giddily runs up the three steps and tugs the door open — half expecting it to be locked with his luck — and a previously silent walker springs out from behind the door. </p><p>Carl stumbles and his back hits the metal rail. The walker lunges at him and he manages to get his hands out in front of him to hold it an arms length away as it gnashes its teeth and reaches a skeletal stump at him. Over the walker’s rotted shoulder he sees another one stumbling out of the stairwell. </p><p>He’s about to lose his balance and tumble over the rail with the geeks on top of him when a gun goes off — twice in rapid succession, pop pop, and then a third time, pop.</p><p>The walker falls limp and Carl shoves it off of him. The second walker crumples to the ground as well. Carl whips around to find the source of the gun — that unreasonably hopeful part of him preparing to be scolded by Michonne or Daryl — but when he rounds he glimpses an unfamiliar figure at the entrance of one of the hallways, too small to be any of his family. Then the mystery shooter turns sharply and runs.</p><p>Carl startles and takes off after them. </p><p>In the straight of the hallway he catches sight of a shaved head, a backpack, before the person takes a sharp left. </p><p>“Wait!” Carl cries out but his voice echoes back at him. He slides on the concrete floor as he throws himself around the same turn. As soon as he begins to gain distance on them he loses it again. Carl barely manages to follow the twists and turns the person takes. He passively realizes at some point that the light panels on the ceiling are emitting a dim glow — enough to see by if he didn’t have his flashlight on and he let his eye adjust — but he’s too focused on keeping up with the person as he also realizes he has no idea how to get back anymore. </p><p>Carl curses when he turns a corner and the mystery shooter is already out of his sight — he’s losing them. He sprints down the hall and makes the only turn, a left, and he quickly comes to a halt in the middle of a small round alcove. Several hallways lead to all different directions before him, and he curses again for not paying closer attention to if they had been following one of the colored arrows that is painted above each of the hall entrances. </p><p>Carl takes a step to turn around but a force slams into him. He’s knocked onto his stomach and a weight holds him to the ground. His cheek presses into the gritty concrete, and he sees his nose is centimeters from a heavy brown boot. </p><p>One of his arms is locked behind his back where a knee digs sharply into his spine, and his other arm is pressed into the ground by the side of his head, a person’s fingers locked tight around his wrist. </p><p>“Hey, woah, woah, I’m not trying to hurt you,” Carl blurts out. His heart hammers against his aching ribs. They aren’t going to kill him — they saved him less than ten minutes ago, and they would have offed him already if they changed their mind — or at least that’s what he hopes. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he repeats breathlessly. </p><p>He can feel their eyes boring into him, sizing him up and deciding his fate as the seconds tick on. He rakes his mind for the things Jesus has taught him. If they’ve gone this long not doing anything they’re letting their guard down. </p><p>Carl throws himself to the side with all the strength he can muster. He jerks his hand off the ground and twists around to grab the person’s own wrist before they can back away. He kicks a leg out from under them and uses his weight to shove them onto the floor. A metal baseball bat goes skittering across the concrete and Carl manages to pin them down on their back, but he’s not fast enough — before he can grab their other hand they reach out and fist a hand into his shirt. Then they’re grappling, he feels their leg hook around his and they both fight for a hold. Carl bars his forearm across their chest to keep them down.</p><p>“I’M NOT GOING TO HURT YOU!” Carl shouts.</p><p>“THEN GET THE FUCK OFF ME!”</p><p>The mystery shooter wriggles a leg free and their knee shoots up between their bodies and hits Carl in the chin. In his disoriented moment, they push their foot into Carl’s chest and shove him off.</p><p>Carl stumbles back as the person hastens to stand up. He manages to find his footing, and he registers the sound of metal unsheathing. </p><p>Carl scrambles for the bat on the ground behind him and he raises it up just as a machete comes down — it would have been a clean cut to either his head or down his middle. Metal hits metal and they stand face to face with their weapons locked above their heads. </p><p>The mystery shooter is a teenager, Carl realizes, and they’re panting, and they are scared — their pupils are blown wide and Carl recognizes that look of desperation to just make it out of this. </p><p>And he sees no flicker of hesitation like he’s having. </p><p>Carl pushes their weapon away before they can pull back to strike again.  He dashes backward with his arms up in obvious surrender, the bat in his hand goes limp and he gently lowers it to the ground. His mystery shooter lowers the machete, though barely.</p><p>“I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want to steal from you,” Carl pants.</p><p>“Then why did you chase me!”</p><p>“Because you ran!” Carl takes a deep breath. “Look, I just wanted to meet you. I didn’t think there were people down here.”</p><p>“There aren’t,” the other teenager snaps. “And that’s the whole point. Until you fucking showed up.”</p><p>“I was with a group, three other people, but I got separated—”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“Oh,” he says, catching his breath. “Right, okay, so… Do you think you can help me find them? You seem to know your way around here a lot better than I do.” He regards them hopefully. They lower their machete all the way down to their side, but their face remains a perfect, unreadable blank mask. </p><p>A scuff echoes from the hallway they came from.</p><p>“No,” the teenager answers. “Not right now.”</p><p>“But — wait,” Carl frowns, “what do you mean ‘not right now’?”</p><p>The boy — or maybe the girl, he isn’t sure by just looking at them — moves their large barbour jacket aside and sheaths the machete at their belt. They turn toward a hallway. </p><p>“Not right now,” his mystery shooter repeats. “We need to get out of here to somewhere closed off and safe. I should’ve just saved my fucking bullets — I’m sure you could’ve saved yourself,” they vent, almost more to themself than to Carl.</p><p>“Well I’m glad you helped.” Carl shuffles after them to match their brisk pace.</p><p>“I’m not! Now the Z’s are going to crawl out of whatever holes they hide in when things are quiet around here!”</p><p>“Zees…?”</p><p>“Z’s, as in Diseased?” The teenager throws him a confused look. “Jerks? Mouthbreathers? The dead?... What do you call them?”</p><p>“We call them walkers, geeks, lurkers, infected…”</p><p>They’re following the white arrows, Carl realizes. They turn down another hall and are met with an immediate wall of darkness — the dim overhead lights aren’t on in this section of the underground — and Carl switches on his flashlight again. A second beam lights up beside him as the teenager pulls out their own, and they sweep their light down the hall before nodding for him to follow.</p><p>After several more turns they come to the shelter Carl found earlier, though they approach it from a different direction than he had before. </p><p>A guttural moan travels down the hallway and the hairs on Carl’s arms raise. He looks around but sees nothing. It's worse not seeing the source, there’s no telling how close or far the dead are when sounds carry so easily down here.</p><p>“Any loud noises — especially in those big rooms and tunnels — draw them out,” the teen explains. They keep their voice low. “They’ll eventually slink back into their holes and be docile again, but because of that little stunt of ours they’re going to be roaming for a while. It’s not worth the risk of staying out here though. There’s too many places for them to sneak up on you or dead ends to trap you in.”</p><p>“You painted the arrows,” Carl observes as the teen unzips their backpack to grab a ring of keys, three silver bottles of spray paint tucked in there.</p><p>They shrug. “There’s no time to look down at a map if you’re running from someone or something.”</p><p>“What do the colors mean? White leads here right?”</p><p>“Yeah…” they say hesitantly, not looking at him as they push aside the blanket. They start unlocking the series of locks and deadbolts on the metal door. “Pink is shortcuts and escape routes and places where there’s less likely to be the dead. Yellow leads to the main tunnels and rooms, and to exits.”</p><p>The final deadbolt unlocks with a thunk. The teen pushes open the door and steps through, hurrying Carl in and quickly shutting the door behind him, and they begin relocking all the locks. </p><p>Inside is much homier than Carl expected. And they’ve been here a while, a long while he’d guess. </p><p>The room is decorated with posters and pictures and more tapestries and blankets like outside on the fence. Several rugs have been laid out, overlapping and blanketing each other in layers of color and pattern to carpet the cold ground. </p><p>What catches his attention most is the sunlight spilling into the room from a narrow window at the top of the leftmost wall. The glass looks layers thick and is fogged over,  nothing whatsoever distinguishable through it other than the thin rectangle of light, and it has to be late afternoon already judging by the golden tone of it.</p><p>Beneath the window sits a mattress elevated on wood pallets, and between the wall and the bed a curtain is fixed to the pipes on the ceiling — it looks like it could be pulled to cover the window if needed. Against the wall at the end of the bed is a metal desk that looks like it originally belonged in this place, as well as the corkboard hung above it. </p><p>As Carl looks around he thinks the room used to be some kind of operation or planning room for the power station down here. </p><p>The next biggest thing Carl notices is the sheer amount of things in the room. Books are stacked everywhere, spilling off the shelf to the right of the door and in stacks on the floor and on the desk and on makeshift shelves created from stacked milk crates. It isn’t just novels he sees, but CD’s, comic books, textbooks, magazines, vinyls, cassettes. It’s far from spotless but it looks organized… and oddly normal. He doesn't know what he expected, but their room looks misplaced, like it could be in some suburban home's basement almost.</p><p>Across from the bed hangs a hammock, fixed from the pipes in the ceiling much like the curtain parallel to it. Against the far wall a door rests ajar and Carl can spy a tiny bathroom, though he notices the shower isn’t in there — it’s next to the bathroom door in the far right corner of the room, and there are no shower panels or curtains, only a square of tiled floor with a drain, beneath a metal showerhead that pokes out of the wall. </p><p>Most of the right wall is taken up by two large metal somethings, both sitting low and wide at waist height. The far one is long and cylindrical, a boiler maybe he thinks, and the other is a generator, though it’s much more intricate than anything Carl’s ever seen up close. Clothes and towels are laid out on the machines as if to dry.</p><p>The final thick bolt locks into place, and Carl’s host turns to him. </p><p>“Set that there with the others, would you?” They gesture to a pile of makeshift weapons resting against the wall, and they cross the room to the generator and kneel down. </p><p>Carl leans the baseball bat alongside a gorestained wrench pipe, next to a crowbar and bolt cutters, and he watches his host flip a switch on the generator. He half expects the overhead lights to turn on, but they remain off.</p><p>“I turned off the light in the hallways…” they say when they see him glance up at the lights. “Might keep the Z’s from riling up too much more.”</p><p>Carl nods and awkwardly shuffles out of their way as they move toward the bed. They shrug off their jacket and set the machete — still in its sheath — on the desk, along with their handgun, and they sit in the desk chair. </p><p>Now seems as good a time as any to properly introduce himself. “I’m—”</p><p>“No names.” They shake their head before he can get more out.</p><p>“What are we supposed to call each other then?”</p><p>“Don’t call us anything.”</p><p>“Fine,” Carl huffs. A twinge of frustration hits him and makes him all the more stubborn back. “Where are you from originally?” he persists, narrowing his eye at them with determination. “I’m from Atlanta.”</p><p>They raise their heavy brows a little at that. “St. Louis,” they answer slowly.</p><p>“Like… in Missouri?”</p><p>“Yeah…?”</p><p>“You’re a long way from home,” Carl says. A bit of his annoyance leaves him as they become more responsive.</p><p>“Look who’s talking, Georgia,” they scoff. It’s not entirely annoyed sounding anymore either. “Sit down or something, please. You’re making me uncomfortable just standing there.”</p><p>Carl smirks, a genuine smile fighting to turn his lips up, and he steps to a clear spot on the rugs not covered by books or CD cases or clothes, and he sits with his legs crossed. “Better?”</p><p>“Barely,” they sigh. </p><p>Carl leans back on his hands. “How long are we supposed to stay hiding here?”</p><p>“Normally I’d say up to a few days, but with your people coming after you I guess through the night will have to do. It’ll take your people almost all night to reach the runoff room, and that’s if they don’t stop at all.”</p><p>Carl stifles the argument that they can’t wait that long and pauses to think it through and not panic. </p><p>If the group realizes they won’t reach him by nightfall like they thought, they'll probably hunker down for a few hours of sleep so they aren’t tired and negligent in an unfamiliar, confusing place — especially if the walkers become active due to the commotion, setting off other geeks like matches lined and lit up. As much as Michonne might insist they find him right away, Daryl and Tara will talk enough sense to remind her they need to be safe and that Carl has looked after himself, by himself, for longer.</p><p>“We can’t find him and help him if we get ourselves bit or lost trying to rush through this place. We’ll take turns sleeping and pick back up after we’ve all gotten a couple hours of rest — we can’t keep going, we’ve already been up since the crack of dawn just to get here before noon.” He can practically hear Daryl reasoning with her.</p><p>“They’ll probably stop and rest,” Carl concludes.</p><p>“Then they won’t be there until morning at the earliest,” the Missouri native tells him.</p><p>“Could we go and leave a note back at the room I fell in. Just something for them to know I’m okay—”</p><p>“We really should be staying the night in here—”</p><p>“And we can, I just want to let them know I’m okay if they get there before I do…”</p><p>His host studies him for a long moment and then sighs. “Fine. I’ll take you back there, but we have to be quick about it. We can leave around eleven — for now, just, I don’t know, make yourself at home until then and stop asking so many questions. I can’t stand four more minutes of it let alone four hours.”</p><p>Carl motions zipping his mouth closed, and as he’s coming to expect, their face remains unphased and unreadable. They rotate in the desk chair and focus on whatever papers are in front of them that Carl can’t see from his seat on the floor.</p><p>After a few minutes of silence, Carl tentatively removes his jacket and sets it by his side and takes in the room more closely.</p><p>Carl scoots to sit in front of the shelves and the piles of books and music, and he spies a milk crate stacked full of comic books and graphic novels. He reaches out to explore the pile but hesitates. He glances to his host — their tanned shaved head is still bowed in distraction. The urge to ask for permission to look through the comics is on the tip of his tongue, but he bites it back, not wanting to invoke their icy wrath again — and they did say make himself at home so that seems permission enough, right?</p><p>Carl grabs a handful off the top of the stack and thumbs through them idly, not really looking for anything specific— maybe for one of his favorites or the next edition in one of the many series he’s read over the years — but mostly he looks to fill his time. He’s halfway through the stack in his hand when a few familiar illustrations catch his eye. </p><p>He can’t help but smile slyly as he passes an abundance of X-Men and Deadpool comics, and he pauses at the first Stranger Things graphic novel. He begins to pay more attention as it’s followed by another series he recognizes. V for Vendetta — he's never read them but he knows snippets of the story, particularly that there is a character with a shaved head in it. He glances over to his host again, then back at the comics, and then back to his host before deciding to keep his curiosity to himself.</p><p>Nothing else in the handful stands out to him, so Carl places them back where he got them from and moves on to the next crate. It’s on it’s side, filled with vinyl records, and stacked beside that are multiple towers of CD cases, each tall enough to reach his knees if he stood up. Carl ghosts a finger along the case spines as he reads the titles. He finds several Beatles’ albums in his host’s collection, taking up almost half a stack by itself — his mom would approve of such an extensive collection, he thinks.</p><p>Carl remembers Lori singing to him in the car, and he remembers his favorite one to sing along with her was I Want To Hold Your Hand because when he was still too little to sit in the front seat, she’d reach her arm back while driving and he’d reach forward and she’d hold onto his hand while she sang. He hasn’t thought of that in a very long time. In fact he almost forgot about it.</p><p>Most of the other music he doesn’t recognize, or it’s familiar but he can’t recall songs from the artists even though he’s sure if he heard some he’d remember. He recognizes the David Bowie CD’s — another one of his mom’s favorites. Although the album cover is familiar he fails to remember any specific lyrics or melodies, and he can feel the memories sitting just out of his mind’s reach in the most annoying way.</p><p>The poster of David Bowie with a lightning bolt across his face is familiar too, but Carl doesn’t recognize any other images hung on the walls.</p><p>Carl wonders if his host knew all this stuff before the apocalypse or if they’d discovered it since then. </p><p>One of the posters taped near the bed has an image of a woman standing next to a man with his back to the camera. The woman has bright orange shaved hair, or at least he thinks it’s a woman — the person is wearing makeup, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Just like how the nail polish bottles on the desk don’t necessarily mean anything, or how the boys clothes and boxers strewn on the floor along with the girls clothes don’t mean anything either — those things especially don’t matter in an apocalypse, clothes are clothes.</p><p>He’s studying the back of his host when they rise from the chair suddenly. Carl snaps his head toward whatever is closest to him and makes himself look occupied. He peaks between the crate of vinyls and his host’s profile, not wanting to be caught staring but wanting some way to initiate conversation. </p><p>They glance over to him as they stand by the bed and pull the curtain closed, blocking out the stripe of faded light from the small window. </p><p>“Light in here is visible from the outside at night,” they tell him. They go around the room lighting various sizes of candles, and to Carl’s surprise, they flip on a small lamp on the desk and another one on the floor by the hammock. “Thank the generator,” they say, smirking at his startled expression. Carl thinks that’s the first time he’s seen them smile. “It powers the overhead lights too but it drains too much power at once — plus the breaker to these overhead lights extends to the ones right in the hall, and we can’t have a Mouthbreather wander through and bump on a light switch out there, can we?”</p><p>With the two lamps and the candles lit he realizes how dim the room had gotten compared to this soft yellow glow.</p><p>Carl opens his mouth to speak but finds he doesn’t know which words he wants to get out first. He momentarily fears they will stop talking to him or telling him anything altogether if he starts talking too much for their liking again. But he’s full to the brim with questions — he wants to ask how long they’ve been here, how did they figure all this stuff out, what’s their name still, for more than one reason.</p><p>They settle back down into the desk chair and just before they turn around Carl takes his chance before it can pass.</p><p>“Can I ask something?” he blurts. “I know you said no more questions but I have just one more.”</p><p>“No.” They don’t even face him when they answer.</p><p>“Well, I’m asking anyways because I don’t want to embarrass myself,” Carl says simply.</p><p>This catches his host’s attention, and they give him a decidedly worried and equally threatening glare.</p><p>“I mean it,” Carl defends. “I don’t want to come across like a total idiot but… I thought you were a boy when I first saw you but then I wasn't sure, and then you didn’t give me your name — and when I get out of here I don’t know if I should tell my family about the cool girl with amazing taste in, like, everything that saved me today, or the cool boy with amazing taste in everything that saved me…”</p><p>They stare at Carl and Carl stares back. He grows increasingly anxious as their face remains utterly blank. </p><p>“ …Does it matter?” they say. “Don’t tell your family about me regardless.”</p><p>“But why?” Carl presses. Why do they make everything so difficult, he wonders angrily.</p><p>“I live down here because it’s away from people — how I want it. I don’t want people knowing I'm here. Please, don't make me regret saving you.” Before Carl can unravel his frustrated thoughts they add: “And I'm not either. Or I’m both, I don't know, I'm just me. And ‘me’ doesn't want anyone having any reason to come down here and bother me, got it?”</p><p>“Fine.” Carl silently fumes. He can feel the teen from Missouri glaring at him even though they are faced away again, and he hopes they can feel him glaring back.</p><p>He isn’t trying to hurt them, or steal from them, or ask anything of them — he never once even asked to be brought here for temporary hiding. They had brought him here, so why are they being so antagonistic. Carl huffs and reaches for one of the X-Men comics he’d seen earlier. He’s read it before, but he reads it again as he determinedly tries to ignore them back.</p><p>Carl is two thirds of the way through the comic book when his stomach growls. He refuses to acknowledge it. A few moments of silence pass before his stomach growls again, louder, and his host snaps up from their chair.</p><p>“I have food over here — you can eat now or refuse it, I don’t care, but I'm hungry too, so,” they say, breaking their cold shoulder treatment. </p><p>Carl timidly watches them walk to the far side of the hammock and sit down beside a wooden crate pushed up against the wall. They pull the crate closer to themself, and Carl caves and gets up to sit across from them. </p><p>In the crate are various cans and jars, peanut butter and bottles of honey and sleeves of crackers, a box and a half of instant rice — and Carl thinks, not for the first time, that beneath the oversized clothes they’re swimming in, the other teen might be a little thinner than they’re supposed to be.</p><p>They pull out two cans of spaghettios and two spoons, and they push the crate of food back against the wall next to a cooler and a small hot plate Carl hadn’t noticed before. They plug the plate into the same electrical outlet the lamp is plugged into.</p><p>The stubbornly silent atmosphere has disappeared, but the Missouri teen doesn’t say anything else or even really look at Carl as they open the cans and set them onto the plate to heat up. While they wait they open the cooler and Carl sees bottles of water and sodas floating in cold water. The Missourian finally meets his eye as they gesture for him to take his pick.</p><p>Carl smiles and leans forward to grab a can of Coke. His host smirks and grabs one for themself as if to say “good choice”.</p><p>They eat with their backs against the wall, the silence a much more comfortable one. The only sound is the scraping of their spoons against the cans and the faint hiss of the semi-cold sodas. Carl takes his time scraping out the last few noodles stuck to the inside of the can.</p><p>“I don’t have a problem with it, you know?” he says without looking up. “It doesn’t matter to me if you’re a boy or a girl, or both or neither. My opinion of you is the same.”</p><p>“And what opinion is that?” They ask to Carl’s surprise.</p><p>Carl looks up at them and a content smile pulls at his lips. He sets his empty can with the spoon in it down next to Missouri’s identical one, and he wanders over to the other side of the hammock, where a battered CD player sits on top of the boiler and a record player beneath it on the floor.</p><p>“Can we play something?” Carl asks hesitantly. He looks over to them and sees they're watching him too.</p><p>They consider him with that same unreadable blank face for a long moment before nodding. “Quietly,” they say, “the door’s pretty soundproof but—”</p><p>“You don’t risk it?” Carl finishes. Missouri snickers and nods. They gesture for him to pick something out as they get up.</p><p>Carl bites his lip to keep his grin contained. He searches the vinyls for one of The Beatles album covers he recognizes most, the one he thinks he can remember some if not most of the songs on it despite how blurry the memories of the music are. He can picture the CD case sitting in his mom’s car’s center console perfectly. He finds With The Beatles on vinyl and brings it over to Missouri sitting patiently, fiddling with the brown and black suitcase looking record player.</p><p>He presses his lips together and holds it out to them. Their eyes flit between him and the record, a smirk that is almost a smile sliding onto their face, like he was missing out on some inside joke. They take the record from him and he watches as they unsheathe the record and gently place it on the turntable.</p><p>“Do you know how to use a record player?” They ask with an amused smile. It might have come across a little condescending if it wasn’t the first time Carl has seen them with an actual fond look in their eyes.</p><p>He shakes his head. “No, my family has never had one, but I’m sure I could figure it out,” he answers.</p><p>Missouri lets out a little breath that’s almost a laugh and Carl smiles a bit wider too. They shift to lay on their stomach, propped up on their elbows. “I’m sure you could too. You turn this little nob here,” they say and the vinyl begins to spin slowly, “and that turns it on and the farther you turn it the louder it gets. And then you just pick up the arm…” They gently place the needle at the edge, and after a few seconds of quiet hissing and popping, the music begins.</p><p>Carl lays on his side, propped on his elbow too, and drinks in the sounds, committing the soft hum of music to memory. He can hear Lori’s voice singing along in his head as the words come back to him. </p><p>“All my lovin’ I will send to you,” he catches himself humming before he can think to stop himself. He glances at Missouri self consciously but they aren’t paying attention to him. He realizes they’re singing under their breath too, imperceptibly quiet, and he smiles crookedly when he catches them tapping their foot to Please Mister Postman.</p><p>As the album nears the last couple songs Carl checks his watch. “You think it’s okay for us to go leave the note yet?”</p><p>Missouri checks their own cracked watch and says, “One more album after this, and then we can go.”</p><p>“Okay,” Carl smirks, “but you’re picking the next one.”</p><p>“Fine,” they snicker back with amusement.</p><p>They sit up and scoot over to the crate full of vinyls, pushing half the stack aside as they search with purpose. They pull out a pink album with a picture of people on the front. When With The Beatles finishes they remove it from the turntable and replace it with their chosen record. </p><p>“If you like The Beatles, you might like this too,” they say as they delicately place the needle on the vinyl. The first song that starts up is familiar enough to make Carl rack his brain to place it, but he can’t pin it down. He grabs the vinyl cover with gentle fingers and looks it over. The bold title at the top “Surrealistic Pillow” rings no bells for him but the songs continue to be just familiar enough to make him sure he's heard it somewhere a long time ago — if what Missouri had said was true, then maybe his mom had liked this band too.</p><p>Missouri takes a breath and looks at Carl. “So what is your family doing down here exactly, if you don’t mind me asking?”</p><p>“We found a map of the city and the tunnels and figured it might be a good place to look for supplies — and safer to navigate than running through the streets like other cities. We were going toward the hospital first, and then maybe see if we could get close to any other businesses that aren’t already ransacked. We were thinking since everyone evacuated cities so fast there might be stuff left behind that people have been too scared to go back through the hoards to get. I guess if you’re here though you’ve probably cleaned out most places.”</p><p>“Not as much as you’d think,” Missouri says. “I take what I need in small pieces at a time, whatever fits in my bag. Getting greedy gets you killed, so… I haven’t ever been to the hospital though. Be careful around there, the closer you get there’s always more dead, and I’ve seen them wandering around inside still — the ones that got trapped in there when people started realizing there’s no helping the infected.”</p><p>“We’re prepared for a lot of them, but it could be worth it, you know?”</p><p>“If you say so. I’ve made do with first aid kits and drugstores just fine so far.”</p><p>But we’ve got whole communities to look after, Carl wants to tell them, but he doesn’t. He’s not sure why, but telling them about the settlements alive out there isn’t something you just drop on a person, especially someone who doesn’t want to be noticed. </p><p> </p><p>When the music sizzles to a stop, they snuff out the candles and shrug on their jackets and equip their weapons. Carl sets his hat back atop his head as Missouri unlocks the door, and he catches them side eye him with a strange look.</p><p>“What?” he asks, adjusting his hat.</p><p>Missouri snickers and shakes their head and walks out the door. </p><p>Carl stays close to them. They both seep their flashlights down the halls, Carl with his knife out and Missouri with the bat from earlier. </p><p>The rustle of bodies against stone echo to them from nearly every hallway, and the occasional low moan raises the hair on the back of Carl’s neck. Good to know Missouri wasn’t lying to kidnap him or something, not that Carl really thought that in the first place, but after everything he’s been through he never says never. </p><p>The first lurker they come across is slumped on the floor, legless from the shins down, and a second shuffles at the end of the same hall. They side-step the first geek easily, and as Carl embeds his knife into it’s rotted skull, Missouri whistles sharply at the other walker — drawing its attention as though it were a dog. Missouri meets the shambling walker half way and swings their bat low at its decaying knees. The walker crumbles and Carl takes it down for good with his knife again. </p><p>They pass three more walkers on the way to the runoff room, and they take them down with the same efficiency and ease as the first two. </p><p>Carl recognizes the tunnels as they get closer to the room, and soon they reach a familiar barred stone archway with a pink arrow above. A walker presses itself against the bars, an arm uselessly swiping at air through the gaps. Missouri pulls out their knife and silently draws closer — they take it down without ever alerting it.</p><p>They each pass through the bars with some effort, and they find no more walkers as they reach the narrow circle that leads to the drain room.</p><p>“I’ll keep a lookout,” they whisper to Carl, knife still in hand. </p><p>Carl nods and crouches to enter the pipe again. Halfway through he glances back and sees Missouri’s feet standing guard as promised. </p><p>The cavernous room is dim and blue — moonlight from the window reflecting off the nearly still water — and it’s bright enough that Carl sets his flashlight down to take the note he’d written out of his pocket, along with the almost used roll of duct tape Missouri had pulled off a metal shelf outside their home. Carl unfolds the paper and tapes it to hang in the hole of the pipe — the same one his family had last seen him in before they split up. The note is short and written in bold marker, telling his family he’ll return at 7AM. It’s not much but it’s something for them to know he didn’t disappear because of something gone wrong — he plans to explain the whole thing after they reunite.</p><p>Carl sighs as anxiety twists in his gut just thinking about Michonne and Daryl and Tara and wherever they are right now.  </p><p>He crawls back out of the tunnel to Missouri waiting, their stony face a tense mask until they incline their head to go and Carl nods.</p><p>They make it back to Missouri’s shelter, side stepping the Z’s they’d taken down and adding two more to the body count. As Missouri unlocks the door they hear more echoes of the dead yet to come.</p><p>Once they’re both inside with the door locked, Carl faces his host with a marginally smug smile. “See, Missouri, no harm no foul,” he says, the rush of a seamless venture thrumming in his veins.</p><p>“What did you just call me?” They turn sharply on their heel and gape at him.</p><p>Carl’s face tints pink. “Missouri,” he answers pointedly.</p><p>“Do not call me that,” Missouri laughs and walks past him to sit on their bed and begin taking their boots off.</p><p>“Well you don’t have a name, so.”</p><p>“I have a name, I just don’t want to give it to you,” they huff.</p><p>“But why?” Carl nags more dramatic than necessary.</p><p>His host regards him, their expression as unreadable as always — though if Carl has to guess he might think they look a little remorseful.</p><p>“Are you afraid you’ll get attached or something? Like don’t name a stray type of thing?” He’s smiling teasingly but their face remains utterly blank, their eyes boring into him with indifference.</p><p>“You can shower if you want,” they say as they move their boots under their desk. “To wash the drain water off.”</p><p>Carl glances to the open shower at the far end of the room and his face turns pink again. “Uh, umm…”</p><p>“I won’t look if that's what you're worried about,” Missouri snickers. They grab a lazily folded stack of clothes from under the bed and they pinch the hem of their too large t-shirt. Missouri begins to lift the shirt and Carl immediately turns away in a panic. He hears them laugh haughtily, and after the sound of shuffling clothes ends he shoots them an unamused look. </p><p>They’ve changed shirts to one not covered in dust and blood and sweat and out of their stained, torn jeans into pajama bottoms. Missouri lays down and with an amused smirk and rolls over to face the wall. </p><p>It’s nearly midnight according to Carl’s watch, and as he looks down at himself and his algae covered clothes he deflates with defeat.</p><p>Carl goes to the tiny section of tiled floor beneath the shower head and strips hastily, glimpsing behind to make sure Missouri’s back is still turned every few seconds. He starts the shower and the water isn’t warm but it’s not cold either, and he rinses off quicker than he ever has in his entire life he thinks. He reaches for the bottle of soap against the wall but thinks better of it. If he isn’t supposed to tell anyone about Missouri and this home of theirs then how would he explain magically being squeaky clean tomorrow?</p><p>He finishes rinsing the dirt from himself and turns the water off, and he uses one of the towels folded on the floor beside the tile to dry off with. He checks that Missouri’s back is still turned again. Just as he reaches for his clothes though, Missouri speaks and startles him — he’d began to think they had fallen asleep</p><p>“There’s clean clothes on that boiler over there if you don't want to sleep in dirty clothes,” they mumble and gesture a hand behind themself at the clothes laid out on the boiler by the hammock. “Please don’t sleep in dirty clothes in my hammock,” they add after a moment.</p><p>Carl laughs under his breath at that and holds the towel around his waist as he goes to change into a pair of athletic shorts and a thread barren t-shirt closest to him. He turns out the last light from the lamp on the floor and the room sinks into pitch darkness. Carl nervously tests his weight on the hammock before managing to lay down in it, and he decides after a few minutes that it’s rather comfortable. </p><p>His watch face lights up as he sets an alarm for the morning and as his eyes grow heavy he mumbles, “Goodnight, Missouri.”</p><p>He’s seconds from falling into sleep when a soft voice reaches him through the fog of drowsiness.</p><p>“Goodnight, Georgia.”</p><p> </p><p>Carl wakes in the morning before his alarm. His watch tells him he has an hour before he needs to be up, but going back to sleep doesn’t feel like an option either, so he rests and relaxes where he is. The room grows from dark to dim to visibly lightening as the pale morning light creeps in from behind the curtain. He slowly makes out more of the room as it brightens — only sensing an outline of the door at first, then the edges of the desk, the stacks of books on it, something sticking out from between the side of the desk and the corner of the wall catches his eye. He squints, trying to decipher what it could be, but his alarm goes off before he can give it much other thought.</p><p>Carl silently, unsteadily steps out of the hammock and grabs his own clothes where he’d left them on the floor with his boots and hat, and he changes quickly. Missouri stirs as he’s tying his shoelaces.</p><p>“Eager to leave?” they snort and rub the sleep from their eyes.</p><p>Carl smiles crookedly. His host rises and grabs some clothes hanging off the generator. They walk to the little bathroom at the far end of the room and close the door behind them. Truthfully, Carl isn’t quite ready to leave — he wants to see his family and know they are okay, but the thought of leaving Missouri stirs up a restlessness in his chest that he doesn’t particularly know what to do with.</p><p> </p><p>Missouri takes him back to the room with the staircase in silence. It’s not an uncomfortable one, but Carl rakes his mind the entire walk for something to say — this goodbye approaching faster than he’s ready for. </p><p>“This is as far as I go,” Missouri tells him when they come to the room. “Go up to the second level — there should be signs on the exits in the stairwell. Follow the yellow arrows and you should be able to follow the sound of water not long after. Hopefully you’ll cross paths with your people, but at the very least you’ll end up in the drain room again on the same level as they should be. Now, three bullets please.” They hold out their hand. “If they heard the gunshots yesterday they’ll want to know from who and why, and you’ll say it was you, but I saw you have limited ammo and you wouldn’t be missing any… so... three bullets, please. Consider it payment.”</p><p>Carl gives them three bullets from his gun. They are both smiling. It’s a little extreme of a cover story, but he gives the bullets anyway and finds he wanted to — like the missing bullets in his gun were proof he hadn't gone crazy down here and imagined up a rather attractive and impressive and smart person with great taste in music and comics and hobbies.</p><p>Carl bites his lip. “I want to ask something.”</p><p>“Don’t.”</p><p>“I think I already know the answer, but I'm going to ask anyway… Come back with me? With us.”</p><p>They shake their head gently. “No.”</p><p>“Fine,” Carl nods.</p><p>Missouri backs up to their hallway and waits, gun ready in hand. “Just in case,” they joke. Their voice echoes a little in the concrete room. </p><p>Carl opens the stair door carefully and no lurkers come out this time. Missouri turns and leaves with a final nod to him, and Carl feels like he’s somehow let somebody down — his family and community for not being a better recruiter, Missouri for not convincing them, himself for failing to convince them. He looks at the entryway where he’d first seen their silhouette and notices three small glints of light on the floor. He glances at the waiting stairs and then dashes over to the hall to pick up the bullet casings from Missouri’s gun. He tucks them in his flannel pocket. An even exchange.</p><p> </p><p>Carl follows the directions Missouri gave him, and as he’s beginning to hear the run of water, and his ears also catch the steps and whispers of people. The low distinct muttering is so familiar it has his stomach flipping with excitement. He picks up his pace, not bothering to hide the sound of his footsteps. </p><p>The voices hush. Then, “Carl?”</p><p>“Chonne?”</p><p>Carl turns the corner and sees his three family members at the opposite end of the tunnel. Michonne runs to her son and Carl meets her half way. She hugs him painfully tight and before holding him at arms’ length — her eyes sweep over him looking for injuries, and when all of his family’s immediate concerns are put to rest, Carl explains his cover story well. </p><p>He tells them he found a room to lock himself into and chill for the night. The room had a map printed on the wall which is how he knew how to get here, and he tells them about the note and his plan to ensure they knew he was safe. </p><p>“No more shortcuts,” Michonne says with finality and relief. The group heads East to a new section of tunnels, toward the heart of the city.</p><p> </p><p>The hospital raid goes well. The group of four fights off walkers methodically and quietly, and they explore the lowest levels of the hospital with ease. Many sections of the building are blocked off completely, and the groans of the dead sound from behind closed doors. They scrounge for what they know is useful and leave without too big of a disturbance. </p><p>They stick to the uppermost tunnels when returning to the cars with their new supplies, and they traverse just beneath the surface of the town to reach Cherrywood’s school campus the next day. </p><p>Carl knows he won’t find Missouri in the shallow tunnels, but at every turned corner and every glance behind there’s a hope that they’ll appear — he’ll see a shaved-headed silhouette and too big jacket and backpack. At the end of the day when the group has filled all their duffel bags and traced their steps through the tunnels, Carl hesitates one last time. He wants to leave them something, see them again, anything. </p><p>The group passes not far from the drain room on their final trip out of the town, the sound of water close by, when Carl sees a white tag of spray paint. The white is crisp and clean and fresh, and small and low enough that none of the others would think anything bizarre of it. There aren’t any other arrows on these levels — Carl knows because he’s been looking — they’re only in the tunnels further down where the painter lives. And this arrow is for him.</p><p>C U GA, MO —&gt;</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Knock-Off Soul</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A week later in Alexandria Carl is still thinking about Missouri. He stares at his X-Men comics and wonders what they're doing now, and he sees the kids’ chalk drawings on the sidewalks and wonders if Missouri wonders about him.</p><p>Carl returns to Cherrywood another week later. He takes a car and a backup can of gas and just enough food to get him by for a couple days. He leaves a note for his family explaining he’d found a person, a good person, and he can't leave them out there alone. </p><p>He doesn’t find them, but they find him. Again.</p><p>Even with the map and painted arrows, he gets lost — the tunnels seem to transform around him and he looks up and suddenly the white arrow has become a yellow one, or there are none at all anymore. It’s a miracle he ever found it the first time, he thinks. </p><p>He checks his watch and sees he’s been looking for almost three hours. It was noon when he arrived, and the sun will be going down in a few more hours. If he is going to admit defeat for the day and sleep in the car he would rather do it with some daylight left. </p><p>He’s staring down at the map, reorienting himself, when a shoe scuffs down the hall behind him. Carl whips around, gun pulled and ready but he lowers it immediately.</p><p>“Why are you here,” Missouri says. They don’t sound as annoyed as he expected. </p><p>“I guess not naming me didn’t work.”</p><p>“I’m not coming with you.”</p><p>“I’m not asking you to,” Carl says. “I came alone — I just want to hang out.”</p><p>Missouri makes a noise somewhere between a choke and a laugh. “How fucking far away do you live?” they gape.</p><p>“Far enough that I really hope I haven’t wasted my time getting here just to be turned around right away.”</p><p>Missouri scoffs and turns on their heel, walking down the hall without a second glance. Carl follows.</p><p>“How long were you watching me be lost before you stepped in?” he asks.</p><p>Missouri snorts. “I do actually leave this place, you know. I was just getting back when I heard you echoing around and came to see what the noise was.”</p><p>The next hall they turn down is dimly lit, the fluorescent lights buzzing with dull energy. One more turn and a caged area draped with blankets and a beaded curtain awaits below a flickering light.</p><p>It’s much less unsettling than the first time Carl found it, and the sight makes him smile. Giddiness unfurls inside his chest.</p><p>Missouri grabs the strands of beads and holds it silent as they pull it back for Carl to walk through, and they gently move it back into place when they’re on the other side, the beads barely clicking together.</p><p>Carl holds the blanket away from the metal door while Missouri drops their backpack to the ground and digs around for the keys.</p><p>“Not that I’m upset to see you,” they say as they unlock the door, “but don’t you think it’s kind of… stupid to come back here alone? I mean what if I hadn’t found you and you got actually lost — no one would’ve known to come looking for you.”</p><p>They pause with their hand on the handle and regard him with genuine concern. </p><p>“My family will figure out where I went when they realize this map is gone too,” Carl assures them. “I’m more worried about the wrath I’m going to face when I get back for leaving the walls alone,” he laughs.</p><p>Missouri looks away. They push the heavy door open and Carl thinks the room is better than he remembers as he steps in behind them.</p><p>“Walls?” they ask in a careful tone, devoid of any feeling. They keep their eyes trained on their hands relocking the door. </p><p>“Yeah,” Carl says tentatively. “We have a community, with walls — a safe zone.”</p><p>“How nice.” Missouri hefts their bag by its strap and drops it on the bed.</p><p>“I wasn’t always behind walls,” Carl defends almost sharply. Missouri glances at him leaned against the door — all weathered hat and bandaged face and scuffed boots — and they meet his gaze apologetically. “Far from it…” he adds, voice softened. “I was already grown up by the time we found Alexandria — uh, our community, I mean.” </p><p>Missouri suppresses a smile as they unzip their backpack. “Grown up?” They shake their head like it’s something funny. “You look MAYBE sixteen.”</p><p>“Seventeen,” he tells them. “You?”</p><p>“Eighteen in November, however close that is.”</p><p>“It’s July twenty-eighth.”</p><p>Missouri stares at him for a moment like it might be a joke, and their eyes widen the slightest when Carl doesn’t laugh. “Oh,” is all they say, and they unpack their bag with a stunned face.</p><p>“It’s been about two years with a calendar again and it’s still weird to me too,” Carl confides and shares a smile with them. He wanders across the room, looking around like it’s for the first time again, and he sets his bag on the ground and slowly sits his weight in the hammock. </p><p>Missouri pulls out several packets of instant ramen, a few cans of various vegetables, and two large candles in glass jars. They place the food in the crate — Carl notices one of the boxes of rice is gone and there’s empty space where more cans had once been, even with the new ones added to their stock. They set one of the candles on a side tipped box full of books and the other beside a short melted pillar candle by their bed.</p><p>“How long were you scavenging before you came back?” he asks as they zip their bag closed and move it to the floor at the end of the bed.</p><p>“Most of the morning.” They see the concern on his face and add, “I usually come back with more, but… I don’t go into places with more than a couple Z’s if I don’t have the gun.”</p><p>“What happened to it?”</p><p>“Nothing, the gun is fine. I— I’m out of ammo. I used my last saving you a few weeks ago.” </p><p>Carl stills. Missouri fidgets from their seat on the bed, not meeting his stare. </p><p>“Look, don’t worry about it, okay?” they say. “I’ll find more ammo eventually, and I don’t even like to use the thing — I just keep it around for worst case scenarios if I get overwhelmed by Z’s or I’m bit… seriously, please stop looking at me like a kicked puppy.”</p><p>Carl sighs and shakes his head. “How is it you can find all this stuff,” he gestures around the room, “but you can’t find the things that’ll keep you alive?”</p><p>“Because not many others are looking for this stuff, but everyone wants bullets and food.”</p><p>Carl laughs despite himself. “Okay, that was a stupid question, you got me there.”</p><p>Missouri laughs with him and he thinks smiling suits them. Their eyes are still bright when they bite their lip, subduing their smile, and ask, “Do you want to see where I get a lot of this stuff?”</p><p>“You mean, like, go up there?”</p><p>Missouri nods. “It’s safe if you’re quiet, and there’s only two of us. I explore the city by myself almost every day. There’s a record store I raid all the time — not all of this is from there but most of the posters and a lot of the music. And most of the comics are from a bookstore a block away. I told you, I see the light of day way more than you seem to think I do.”</p><p>“Alright. Prove it.”</p><p>Missouri leads them out of the underground a new way. They come out of the tunnels to a building’s basement, and as they climb the staircase up Carl realizes they’re in an old town hall — they pass museum set pieces reconstructed to resemble colonial times, then offices and boardrooms and out a side door to an abandoned alleyway.</p><p>They stealth to the edge of the alley, sticking close to the red brick building for cover, and peer down the main street lined with shops and businesses. Most window fronts are shattered or covered in dust and old gore. The sun shines bright overhead on them as they slip across the street, passing a few walkers meandering in that dormant way that means they aren’t aware of the living’s presence yet. </p><p>Missouri stops under a faded blue awning and peers into the dark shop from it’s dirty glass door. </p><p>“It’s safe,” they say and reach a hand through a small hole in the glass — the sharp edges close enough to their thin wrist to make Carl cringe — and they turn the lock from the inside. </p><p>They slowly push open the door, looking up as they do, and Carl realizes why. A bell is on the other side of the door. As the edge of the door tinks against the bell, Missouri reaches up through the thin gap and grabs the bell. They push the door open enough for both of them to get through, and gently let go of the bell as Carl flips the lock again.</p><p>Inside the store are rows upon rows of cd’s, and in the back are more rows with vinyls. Posters sit rolled up in cubbies beneath a wall full of hung pictures with labels and price stickers in the corner, and hung on the parallel wall are dozens of guitars.</p><p>They browse as they pass through. Carl skims through the cd’s, looking for the few things he recognizes. He passes several Queen albums — one of the few things he remembers his parents’ musical tastes agreeing on. </p><p>Missouri meanders down the aisle across from him, trailing paths in the dust with their fingertips, spending just as much time looking at him as they do at the store. He catches them eying one of the electric guitars hung on a wall as they pass it — deep blue and shiny even under layers of dust.</p><p>Carl leaves the cd’s behind to catch up. For some reason he feels like he would be taking something that belongs to them — this is their town after all.</p><p>He reaches Missouri standing beneath the wall of guitars and they smirk and walk to the end of the store with comfortable familiarity and they nod for him to follow them through the doorway to the backroom. A staircase at the back of the store leads them past a second story and to the roof.</p><p>The late afternoon sun is warm but the breeze is almost cool, and it rustles overgrown branches of trees peeking over the tops of low brick buildings and lining the streets. If it weren’t for the group of twenty or so walkers ambling around the street it would be kind of beautiful.</p><p>A dragging sound draws Carl’s attention and he sees Missouri hefting up a large, wide length of plywood that laid on the ground. They place it on the edge of the roof and carefully slide it out until it reaches across to the roof of the building over, forming a narrow little bridge.</p><p>Carl’s stomach sinks at the sight.</p><p>“The comic book store is a few buildings down. It’s easier to go this way than try to run down the road and avoid Z’s.”</p><p>“Easier,” Carl half scoffs, half laughs, all nerves.</p><p>“It’s safe, I promise. I wouldn’t go this way if it wasn’t,” they laugh — it’s light and unbothered. “Plus the front door to the place is locked and I’ve never been able to find the keys, and I don’t feel like breaking the windows to get in, so, roof entrance.”</p><p>Carl nears the side of the roof where Missouri waits. He glances over the edge and sees the fire escape from the next building is collapsed in a rusted pile in the side alley. </p><p>In one swift sure movement Missouri steps onto the ledge and onto the plywood. Carl’s heart leaps and he grabs the board, holding it into place in a flash of panic.</p><p>“It’s sturdier than it looks,” they tell him. “You don’t have to worry.”</p><p>“Definitely going to worry,” Carl grits through his teeth.</p><p>Missouri walks quick and low across the beam, Carl feeling each foot fall vibrate through the wood, but it doesn’t move. It doesn’t bow with their weight or even hint at tipping, and Missouri hops down onto the other roof with practiced ease. They turn and smile, grabbing hold of the edge of the board.</p><p>“Coming?”</p><p>Carl swallows thickly. His hands feel shaky as he steps onto the board.</p><p>The two story fall probably wouldn’t hurt him that bad, he knows logically, but his head and gut swim with the fear anyway. He forces his breath out evenly as he crouches low and crosses, sight fixed on the stretch of wood immediately in front of him and nothing else. Before he knows it the edge of the roof enters his vision and a tan hand reaches out. He grabs their arm and they hold tight as he steps off the board and onto the roof.</p><p>“If I’d have known you were scared of heights I would’ve said something sooner,” Missouri apologizes.</p><p>Carl lets go of their arm, hyperaware that his palms are slick with sweat. He wipes his hands on the thighs of his jeans. “I’m not— I didn’t used to be afraid of heights. I’m just afraid I’ll lose my balance and…” he adjusts his hat on his head, hand unconsciously brushing the bandage over the place where his right eye used to be.</p><p>Missouri nods slowly. “Well, that’s the only one,” they say.</p><p>They cross the roof and Missouri throws a leg over the ledge and hops down, their feet rattling the metal of the fire escape beneath them. The two descend the zigzagging stairs and go up the ladder of the neighboring three story building. The opposite side of the three story building has a fire escape, though it creaks and groans with rust.</p><p>Missouri glances back at Carl several times as they go down it, eyes searching his face to ensure he’s alright.</p><p>“This is it,” they tell him as they climb the ladder to the fire escape of the next building. Green vines and leaves have grown up and around the corner of the two story building, beginning to cling to the fire escape and curling around the edge of the roof as well.</p><p>They enter through a door on the roof like the first store and it leads them to a back room with a small table and kitchen — a break room, already emptied and ransacked of anything worth while.</p><p>The top floor of the building is all books, and Missouri leads him down the stairs to the bottom floor. Aisles of comics, video games, and dvd’s span the entire floor.</p><p>“Well, Georgia, was it worth it?” they ask as he gapes at the center of the room where rows and rows of comic books and graphic novels are on display.</p><p>He looks over to Missouri and they share a grin. Carl all but runs down the last few stairs and to the tables of boxes lined up and full of comics. He flips through them, unable to contain his awe. </p><p>“Marvel or DC?” he asks as Missouri takes their time catching up.</p><p>“DC,” they answer with little thought. “Marvel’s not bad but DC’s character origins are almost always cooler.”</p><p>“Their villains are better too,” Carl adds.</p><p>“DC for you too then?”</p><p>“Usually. Spiderman is my ultimate favorite though.” </p><p>Missouri smirks, amused. “I can tell.” </p><p>“What’s that supposed to mean?” </p><p>“I don’t know, you just seem like the Peter Parker type.” </p><p>“I’ll have you know that since discovering Miles Morales I actually prefer him. But Peter Parker will always have a special place in my heart.” </p><p>“He was your first?” they tease.</p><p>Carl scoffs. “Well, What’s yours? F-favorite, of all time, I mean?” His face feels warm.</p><p>Their smile widens a little. “Teen Titans. I used to watch it on Saturday mornings—” </p><p>“—on Cartoon Network—” </p><p>“Yes,” they laugh. “I’d never read comics before the world went to shit, but they were the first I ever picked up.”</p><p>“You weren’t into them before the apocalypse?”</p><p>“Not really, I had enough other things that kept me busy. Why, were you a comic book nerd before?”</p><p>“Sort of, I was just getting into them… I guess I kept picking them up out of habit.”</p><p>“Or nostalgia,” they ponder airily.</p><p>“Both,” Carl agrees. He looks down at the small stack he’s picked out to take and he has the urge to leave them, to get rid of the stacks on his desk in his room at home. It’s not the first time the thought has crossed his mind, and like every time before, the idea makes something unpleasant catch in his chest. “Do you think you’d still like all the things you do if the world hadn’t ended?” he asks.</p><p>Missouri regards him for a long second, their face unreadable, and they walk around the aisle and stand in front of him. They pick up the stack and place it in his hands. “Take them, Georgia.” </p><p>He adds the comics to his bag.</p><p>The sun through the dust coated windows grows golden by the time the two go back out onto the roof. They pause on top of the third story building. The blue sky is turning a pale pink on the horizon and the occasional fluffy white clouds tint a peachy orange. They watch from the rooftop as the group of walkers meanders out of sight onto another street.</p><p>“I’d still like everything,” they say. “Reading, music… I liked them before and I think I’d still like them if the world hadn’t ended. Those things just mean more now, I think. They’re more than just what’s familiar… they’re...”</p><p>“Proof the world actually existed,” Carl supplies.</p><p>“Yeah,” Missouri nods. A lone walker separates from the group and roams back down the street by itself. “The memories feel fake sometimes, like it was a fever dream or something after reading too many books about a world where cell phones and schools and government and things are real.”</p><p>Carl steps closer to them, near the edge of the roof. Another lurker wanders out of a shattered store front and joins the other. “Whenever I hear my parents, my family — or any adult really — talk about things from before, it’s like we remember two totally different worlds.”</p><p>“We’re not from different worlds, we’re just different species.” Missouri sits on the ledge, dangling their legs over with startling confidence. “The kids from the old world have had to become a totally new species of people — we’ll never be like the adults that were around then and are still around now.”</p><p>Carl lowers himself to sit on the ledge too. The height isn’t as scary as it had been on the board, not with someone next to him. “And we’re not going to be like the kids who only know this world,” he says. He knows it for a fact.</p><p>Judith comes to his mind, and Herschel Jr., and Gracie, Aaron and Eric’s daughter.</p><p>The little ones have reached the age where their parents have to start explaining the walls, why they have them and to run or shout for help if a monster is near them. Judith is the oldest of the new generation by about a year, and everything with her is questions. </p><p>She understands monsters, she understands walls, she understands not to touch guns or Mommy’s sword or Uncle Daryl’s crossbow. Her questions aren’t about why dead people come back or why they have to be careful with newcomers. Her questions mostly come from books and pictures. She doesn’t question Spiderman, but she asks what a newspaper is, and what is this place he’s in, what are those big buildings, how are there so many people. </p><p>One day Judith asked if Spiderman’s home, New York, is on another planet — like how Superman is from Krypton. It had hit Carl like a concrete wall that day that the world he knew lives solely inside of him, and the few others his age that are around to remember it too. </p><p>He isn’t the only living teenager of course — most lived in The Kingdom, a couple at Hilltop, even fewer at Alexandria — but within the handful of them there are only two others that truly grew up in the midst of the end of the world and experienced it like he had. </p><p>The other kids were sheltered, found walls early on, hadn’t witnessed the horror that awaits everywhere. To those kids, they never really left their worlds, it hadn’t ended for them — not like it had for him and Enid and Margot. </p><p>They see each other infrequently, all living in different communities, and the times they do hang out have become bittersweet, for Carl at least. </p><p>The two girls have settled into life and found their places. Margot has become one of Carol and Ezekiel’s accidentally adopted orphans, and she’s grown into a big sister to Henry. Enid is both one of Maggie’s closest family members now and her understudy as well. She’ll make a good leader some day, and an even better doctor too based on Dr. Carson and Siddiq’s praises.</p><p>But Carl hasn’t found his spot yet — like a puzzle piece with one wrong side he can’t make sense of, left floating around on the outskirts of the picture, disconnected in a way he hadn’t felt before.</p><p>Life has been calm long enough that the years of grief have finally caught up to him. Grief over the people they lost too suddenly, the life he would have had, over the person he isn’t anymore — that innocent, naive kid going looking for walkers in the woods alone. Going looking for the apocalypse his family was trying to shield him from. He hadn’t needed to go looking for it. It eventually came to him without a choice. It came to him when Sophia walked out of the barn, when Shane rose with cataract eyes, when his mom bled out on a prison floor, and again when he’d shot her. It came so many times after, too. And it kept coming. But it isn’t coming anymore, and it hasn’t been for a while. He could be at peace, but he isn’t. And he doesn’t know how to be, or who to be.</p><p>The last bit of blue at the top of the sky turns lilac. The horizon lights up a bright pink, a blazing orange sun dipping below the line of buildings and trees. They’ll need to go underground soon.</p><p>“Do you think it’s better that the world ended?” Missouri asks.</p><p>“Better?” Carl frowns.</p><p>“Not in every way,” Missouri remarks. “I don’t mean the dead or the infected. But with the living — everyone’s clearer and more honest. Less masked. Peter Parker wouldn’t go around as Spiderman, he’d just be Peter Parker who likes to save people, or Bruce Wayne wouldn’t need to hide as Batman to do the things he wants to do, be the man he wants to be... And Norman Osborn wouldn’t dress up as the Green Goblin to commit his crimes and the Riddler wouldn’t call himself the Riddler, he’d just be some fucked up guy who likes puzzles.”</p><p>“Evil people stop hiding that they’re evil, and you see who’s actually a good person.”</p><p>“Exactly. Without a society existing, telling you what’s okay and not okay to be, people are their true selves. Whatever that might be.”</p><p>Carl’s gaze traces over the planes of their face, along their spiky shaved head and down to their chipped nail polish. “Like a not-boy-and-not-girl?”</p><p>Missouri meets his eye for a fleeting second before looking away, a trace of pink high on their cheeks. “Maybe…”</p><p>“Is that why you don't want to go back to any civilization?” Carl pries. “Even if they're small ones?”</p><p>“It’s a part of it anyway.” </p><p>“What’s the other part?”</p><p>They press their lips together. “Societies get ugly, whether other people come in and make it that way or it turns on itself. I’ve seen it happen more than once, and I don't want that kind of chaos. I’ve made my piece of peace here. What's so wrong with keeping it?”</p><p>“Well,” Carl says as lightly as he can, “you’re alone.”</p><p>Missouri holds in a laugh. “That’s rude.”</p><p>“Aren’t you though? Lonely, I mean. I think that’s why you saved me, and why you fill your room with voices and faces and stories.” Carl knocks together the toes of their boots dangling off the ledge, but Missouri stares steadfastly at the violet and orange sky. “You miss people even if you don't want to.”</p><p>“I liked music before the world ended, remember? Come on, we should get going.” The first few dots of stars twinkle high above them. Missouri rises and offers a hand to pull Carl up. “We can go down and around the buildings so you don’t have to cross the board again.”</p><p>“No, it’s alright,” Carl says. “But promise you’ll at least try to catch me if I fall?”</p><p>Missouri smiles wide and rolls their eyes. “I’ll do a lot more than just try, Georgia.”</p><p> </p><p>The two eat dinner together again after closing the window curtain and lighting the candles and turning on the lamps. Carl pulls out his own food this time — as he expected they refuse to take any of his share when he offers, and they stubbornly tear open a packet of ramen and drop it in the heated water on the hot plate.</p><p>“Too late,” they say flippantly.</p><p>Carl sighs and shakes his head, and he contemplates telling them he has plenty of food waiting for him when he goes home — four communities worth of crops and farms and carefully built up pantries.</p><p>As they eat he worries over their sunken eyes and thin cheeks too sharp for someone their age who should still have a lingering childish roundness to their features. He wonders briefly how they managed to knock him down and put up such a fight the first time they met.</p><p>“What?” they ask, scrutinizing his face. </p><p>Carl realizes he’s been staring and heat rises to his face. “It’s nothing.”</p><p>“Well tell me anyway.”</p><p>He bites down on his lip with uncertainty.“I was thinking that you’re a lot stronger than you look. If I didn’t know better I would think I could take you in a fight, easily.”</p><p>“Confident words from a guy who’s ass I had pinned to the ground. Twice.”</p><p>His face flushes warmer still and he finds it hard to look right at them, but he’s smiling. “I chalk most of that up to skill, not strength. Where’d you learn to defend yourself anyway?”</p><p>Missouri’s expression closes up a little and they take their time to answer. “A couple years ago — someone showed me what they knew,” they say vaguely. </p><p>Carl snickers and holds in a laugh when they glare at him. “Yeah, someone had to show you at some point,” he teases. “Isn’t that kind of how you have to learn these things?” </p><p>Their face remains unimpressed, but they can’t disguise the hint of a smile quirking their lips. “Who showed you how to fight then? You seem to handle yourself alright.”</p><p>“Jesus has been teaching me,” he answers without thinking. It’s only when he glances up and sees their bewildered, wary eyes that heat rushes to his face. “I— no— he— he’s — fuck, I sound crazy — he’s a real person, Jesus is just his nickname because he looks like the guy, he’s got the beard and the hair. Our group met him a few years ago — he’s, like, family now. He knows all kinds of martial arts and all that stuff from before the apocalypse—” Carl’s aware he’s blabbering but he can’t seem to make himself shut up or make his face feel less hot.</p><p>The worry on Missouri’s face slowly dissipates as he keeps going and is replaced with amusement. Eventually they take pity on him and grab the wrist of one of his hands he’s been talking with and stills him. “You’re good, Georgia. I don’t think you’re crazy — at least not anymore,” they grin. </p><p>He laughs with them and his tension deflates. They’re fingers are wrapped around his wrist are warm and as firm and reassuring as they had been earlier today. He can’t help but glance down at where they touch — and he tries not to notice their bony wrists or the jagged scars around the side of the skin. Instinctively his gaze flickers to their other wrist and he finds the same marks there too. </p><p>The scars look too messy and random to be purposeful. He’d seen people who struggled too much in handcuffs and had reddened marks in the same spots… to leave those kinds of scars he can’t imagine the mess of blood and gashed skin that their wrists had once been — if that’s where they came from, but he is almost positive despite how old the healed wound looks. </p><p>Missouri lets go and Carl misses the contact immediately. He thinks about reaching out and putting their hand back.</p><p>“You should pick something out again,” they say and nod to the crates of music as they rise to clean up.</p><p>Carl looks through their cd’s this time. He chooses one from the top of a stack with a familiar cover, one they listen to often he assumes.</p><p>He waits for them to finish turning off the lamps and plug in the cd player, and he holds out the case to them. The album cover is an aged black and white photograph of two people, their faces obscured by splashes of red. </p><p>“I’ve never heard of them,” Carl explains, “but you have a poster of it on your wall so it must be good.”</p><p>“Bloodwitch.” They smile sheepishly as they take it from him and pop the disk out of the case. “They only ever released one album, but I never get tired of it — if I could only listen to one thing for the rest of my life, it’d be this.”</p><p>They listen, laying on the floor on their backs, their heads close to the radio they can’t play too loud. </p><p>“How close is Missouri?” Carl asks.</p><p>“Hundreds of miles probably.”</p><p>“Ha ha. Does your name start with the same letter?”</p><p>“I’m not telling.”</p><p>“So yes,” he smirks. “Is it Michael?”</p><p>“Cold.”</p><p>“Mmmmmmaddy?”</p><p>“Colder.”</p><p>“Mmmmm—”</p><p>“Doesn’t start with an M.”</p><p>“Nnnnathan.”</p><p>“Freezing.”</p><p>“Lllluke—us? Lucas”</p><p>“Warmer.”</p><p>“Lex luthor.”</p><p>“What gave it away?” Missouri sighs.</p><p>“Your head,” Carl deadpans. “Not the lack of hair — it was your superior brain power and intellect.”</p><p>“Nice try,” they snicker. “Flattery will get you nowhere.”</p><p>“Liam.”</p><p>“Uck, don’t you ever give up?”</p><p>“No. Kyle.”</p><p>“Colder.”</p><p>“Fuck,” Carl breathes. “Can I please have a hint, Lex? Help an inferior brained person out please.”</p><p>“Fine,” Missouri concedes. “The answer is in this room.”</p><p>Carl sits up on his elbows and throws them an astounded look. “That could be so much!” he laments. “That could be anything! Hell that could still be Lex Luthor!”</p><p>Missouri breaks into laughter and holds their stomach as they catch their breath. “I wasn’t going to make the hint easy, that defeats the point! What do you want — for me to circle it in bold black sharpie for you?"</p><p>“I mean, yeah, that’d make it a lot easier,” Carl says.</p><p>“Maybe just take the loss,” they tell him.</p><p>“Never,” he says as he lays back down. A new track starts, and they settle into silence again. There’s just the music and Missouri’s breathing and this room. He closes his eye.</p><p>He could believe this is a normal bedroom, in a normal house, a normal world. He can feel it so acutely, as though he’d stepped out of time and into a different one. A Saturday night at a friends house, a reprieve from burdensome school and expectations of parents, impending tests and assignments. He feels as close to the other life as he can feel the carpet beneath his fingertips.</p><p>“Lead me from my head down underground, lying down until my soul turned flat, feel the magic break inside me now…”</p><p>He opens his eye. The concrete ceiling bolted with pipes and cables looks back at him. He turns his head to find Missouri with their eyes closed too, lips moving along to the words soundlessly.</p><p>Something in his chest catches and the words leave his mouth before he even thinks about saying them. “Do you think this is what it would’ve been like? If the world hadn’t ended?”</p><p>Missouri turns their head and faces him back, their eyes shining gold in the yellow light. He feels their hand brush his at their sides, and he’s sure they can feel his pulse racing through his skin.</p><p>“I don’t think my life would’ve looked like this, but I know I would wish it would — wish I had someone like you around.”</p><p>He turns his hand slightly and curls his fingers lightly around theirs. “You do.”</p><p>Missouri’s lips quirk into a smile and they hold his gaze for a long moment, until their eyes flicker down and then away, turning their head to stare up at the ceiling. Carl thinks their face looks a bit pinker than usual, but he doesn’t say anything. His face feels warm too.</p><p>It’s well past midnight when they put away the cd’s and comics. Carl lays in the hammock like before, dangles a leg out, brushing a toe against the ground to swing himself gently. He sees the shape between the desk and the wall again, and recognizes it in the dim light this time as the neck of an instrument.</p><p>“You play guitar?” he blurts. “That’s what you meant when you said you liked music before, wasn’t it? Can I hear you play?”</p><p>Missouri freezes at the onslaught and regards him with wide eyes. They blow out the candle sitting on the sideways crate of books and make their way to their bed.</p><p>“Yes that’s kind of what I meant when I said I liked music, and no you can’t hear me play,” they say self consciously. “I only know a little bit of guitar — the music teacher in my middle school gave me piano lessons, and she was going to teach me guitar too when I told her I had one — it was a present from my mom, she knew how to play and she was going to show me but… she never got around to it.” They pull the covers around themself. “My teacher had an electric guitar that she was going to let me learn too, after I’d gotten better at acoustic... then the world ended, so. Yeah. I guess I’ve taken up the hobby again since I have all the time in the world now.”</p><p>“Can I please hear you play?” Carl begs. “I don’t care if it’s bad, it’ll be better than anything I could do.”</p><p>“Does no one behind your walls know how to play guitar? It’s not like it’s a rare skill.”</p><p>“I’m sure there’s someone,” Carl says, “but no one that I know. It sounds weird but I’ve never seen anyone play an instrument in real life … I was too young to really go to concerts before and since then, well, life’s had other priorities. You’d be the first, Missouri.”</p><p>“I don’t think I can play in front of people,” they sound sorry as they say it, “and besides, it’s late. Maybe another time.”</p><p>“So there’ll be another time?”</p><p>“Shut up. And stop calling me Missouri.”</p><p>“What else should I think of you as in my head then?”</p><p>“Don’t think about me.”</p><p>“But I do, so.”</p><p>Missouri rolls their eyes and leans over the final candle beside their bed and blows it out. The room falls completely dark and they shuffle around in bed for a few moments before the room goes quiet too.</p><p>“Georgia…?”</p><p>“Yeah?” He sounds more eager than he meant to and he cringes at himself.</p><p>“I think about you too… I guess I’m glad I saved you or whatever.”</p><p>“I’m glad you let me come back.”</p><p>“Goodnight, Georgia.” They sound like they might be smiling.</p><p>Carl is too. “Goodnight, Missouri.”</p><p> </p><p>Morning light fills the room through the window when he wakes up, and Missouri sits on their bed in fresh clothes, zipping a side pocket of their backpack closed. He wishes they’d woken him up so that he might’ve had a few more hours with them.</p><p>They walk Carl out through a new exit in the morning — this one a factory basement on the edge of the city, much closer and easier than the convoluted way he’d come in through the drain tunnels before. The brown brick building is surrounded by a wide concrete lot with green growing up through the cracks. Other than the woods encroaching at the edge of the lot, there’s nothing but several rusty cars sitting abandoned — not even a walker in sight.</p><p>Carl spies a police car with the town’s name on it amongst the junked vehicles and he lights up. He speeds over to the cruiser.</p><p>“—Georgia!” Missouri calls and runs after him.</p><p>With no lurker in the car Carl opens the door and loots around the seats and floorboards and glove compartment. He doesn’t find what he’s searching for, he doesn’t find anything at all actually, and he sags in the driver’s seat.</p><p>“What the fuck—” Missouri stops in front of the open car door, a little out of breath, and looks expectantly at him.</p><p>“I was hoping there would be ammunition in here,” Carl explains. “Or even another firearm… to repay you for using your last because of me. Everything worth something has already been taken though.”</p><p>“Mostly by me,” they say. </p><p>“Is this where you got your gun from?”</p><p>“Not the gun, some of the ammunition, though. I took everything except for what’s in the tank.”</p><p>Carl sits up straighter. “You mean it’s still full of gas?”</p><p>“Probably, at least some of the cars are. They’ve all been here longer than me, looked like they were left early on based on what I found in them.”</p><p>“We could try to siphon them to find out — there could be weeks worth of fuel sitting in this parking lot.”</p><p>“You know how to do that?”</p><p>“Don’t you?”</p><p>Missouri shakes their head. </p><p>Carl stares. “How did you get all the way from Missouri to here without needing fuel?”</p><p>“I walked, for most of it anyway.”</p><p>Carl shakes his head slowly. “I’m going to need more of that story eventually,” he says, smiling at them.</p><p>They smirk and cross one of their arms. “I’m sure you’ve got a better one,” they say and flick the brim of his hat. It shifts back on his head and he catches it before it can slide off. He stands out of the driver’s seat and Missouri retreats a step back so they don’t knock into each other. Carl smirks back.</p><p>“Where’s the station here?” he asks.</p><p>Missouri shrugs. “Few blocks over from the city hall we were in yesterday. You’re not thinking of going there are you? That place is crawling with Z’s inside, not to mention it’s boarded up to hell and back.”</p><p>“There’ll be more guns and ammunition in the station.”</p><p>They make a face, their brows pinching and their nose scrunched up, or maybe it’s the sun growing brighter on them. “I’d rather not use the gun. I survived a long time without one, I could do it again.”</p><p>“It’s easier to survive with one, though.”</p><p>Missouri shrugs and shuffles in place, their face masked and undecipherable. Carl forgot what that looks like, he had grown used to their wry smiles and bright eyes.</p><p>“Come on,” Carl says lightly, turning back toward the building. “I’ll show you how to steal gasoline from a car.”</p><p>Missouri’s mask cracks and they follow him, their lips fighting to turn up.</p><p>They find several empty five gallon jugs inside the factory. They take them out to the lot and slowly fill four of them up between all the cars, and they each carry two of the jugs as Missouri leads them through the thicket of lush green bushes and trees. An asphalt road appears between the foliage a ways away, not far from a large stone tunnel opening that is very familiar to Carl by now.</p><p>They pause to set down the gallons and rest. The summer air has warmed up considerably now that the sun is out and risen high above in the cloudless sky.</p><p>Carl looks from the road to his companion. They’d left their heavy barbour jacket behind today, and their too large t-shirt sleeves are rolled up. The skin of their arms is dappled with little moles and a few freckles, and he’s torn between committing those tiny details to memory and forcing himself to be blissfully oblivious so that it might not be so hard to leave. His gaze lingers on them, even when they notice and stare back. </p><p>“If I ask you to come back with me...?” </p><p>They shake their head and their face is solemn. “I’ll say no.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“You know why.”</p><p>“Not really. You’re happy here, but you could be happy there too, you know.”</p><p>They shake their head again and their eyes that had seemed hazel last night reflected as green as the woods around them. He decides it’s too late to stop paying attention. </p><p>“I’m sorry,” they say quietly.</p><p>Carl nods slowly and drops his gaze as they pick the jugs back up and walk the rest of the way to his car. It’s parked just off the road, and he removes the leafy branches from its roof and Missouri helps stow the gallons of gas into the trunk.</p><p>He looks at his new friend and they look back, a suspended moment of neither knowing how to say goodbye, if this is it.</p><p>He thinks about saying he’ll be back, but he can’t know that for sure, and what if they decide they don’t want him coming back, they’ve already let this go too far, they might not be here waiting for him again.</p><p>Missouri reaches into their backpack. “Here.” They hold out a cd case to him, The Beatles White Album. “Keep it.”</p><p>“I can’t take this.”</p><p>“You and I both know for a fact there’s more copies of it in the music store, it’s not like I’ll never hear it again. I want you to have it.”</p><p>Carl swallows. “Fine… thank you, Missouri.”</p><p>“You’re welcome, Georgia.” Their hands linger over one another before Missouri pulls back and shoves their hands in the pockets of their torn up jeans. </p><p>Carl gets in the car and he watches them the whole time he’s turning the car around and he sees them watching back from the rearview mirror until he’s too far away.</p><p>He sings to the cd the whole way home, and he thinks of everything he wants to ask when he sees them again.</p><p>He wants to know more, so much more. </p><p>He knows they love fantasy just a little more than science fiction, he knows their favorite music has an older sound, or it’s simplistic, just an acoustic guitar and a voice. He knows their favorite colors are yellow and green. He knows all the goods, but he wants to know about the bads.</p><p>Carl wants to ask about the scars, if they were from handcuffs like he thinks. He wants to know if they have been alone since the start, and if not then how’d they get that way. And he wants to tell them how he got here from Georgia. He wants to show them his scars too. He wants to tell them about how he’s been shot twice and somehow survived both times. He wants to tell them about his family and their own peace they’ve built for themselves too. </p><p>He wants them to know his name so that, hopefully, if they think about him they would have something to call him.</p><p> </p><p>When Carl passes the first signs of construction outside of Alexandria’s walls his stomach finally knots with put-off anxiety. The feeling tightens as he pulls up to the main gate and one of the guards on top notices him and climbs down. He takes the cd out of the radio and puts it safely in his bag while he waits for the gate to open enough to drive through, and he prepares to be dragged out of the car by his ear.</p><p>He parks behind a line of cars just inside the wall and gets out to open the trunk and retrieve the gasoline. He spies Daryl and Jesus atop the wall on the lookout posts, on duty for the afternoon. Jesus grins at him and shakes his head like he’s watching the funniest movie ever and Daryl stares him down with a flick of his cigarette.</p><p>“Hey Jesus,” Carl waves. “How’s everyone at Hilltop?”</p><p>“They’re doing good. Enid said to tell you she’s coming with the trade next week.”</p><p>“Oh cool… I’m about to be skinned alive, aren’t I?” He peers up at them.</p><p>Jesus laughs out loud and Daryl breaks into a crooked smile.</p><p>“Oh yeah,” Daryl chuckles. “Start saying your goodbyes, kid.”</p><p>“That’s what I thought…” Carl sighs and turns around, and he goes rigid. “I’ll start my ten part apology now,” Carl says as Rick and Michonne stalk towards him with murder in their eyes.</p><p>“You better,” Michonne growls.</p><p>“First I’d like to point out that my trip was not a waste of resources—” he gestures to the extra gas inside the trunk and jumps back out of Rick’s approaching warpath, circling the car to keep a safe distance. Jesus and Daryl stifle their cackles as they watch the show from above. </p><p> </p><p>Inside their house, Rick and Michonne have had Carl cornered at the kitchen table for almost an hour.</p><p>“You could have gotten hurt and no one would’ve known where you were!” Rick stands with his hands on his hips. </p><p>“I should have told you first, I agree,” Carl says as diplomatically as he can muster. His calm began to waver four scoldings ago.</p><p>“If you wanted to recruit somebody that is a community decision,” Rick stresses. </p><p>“You don’t bring someone back by yourself,” Michonne adds, arms crossed.</p><p>“But they’re a kid!” Carl snaps.</p><p>“That doesn’t— what?” The words sink in and Rick stares at his son, caught off guard.</p><p>“They’re… they’re same age as me,” Carl explains more timidly. “They don’t want people knowing they’re there — too many bad experiences… you know how it is…” He watches as Rick and Michonne trade looks, and he catches Michonne’s eyes. “I met them when we were in the tunnels, after…”</p><p>“Oh…”</p><p>“After what?” Rick looks between them.</p><p>Michonne nods to Carl and sighs. “Go on and tell him.”</p><p>“I got separated from the others when we were figuring out a way under that town, Dad. Not for too long! But I ran into someone — or I guess they ran into me — and they let me stay at their home, um, their camp, for the night. Until I could go out and find the group again. They asked me not to tell anyone about them so I didn’t, but after we left I couldn’t just… leave them there… I asked them to come back with me and at least meet the group and decide after but they refused.” Carl regards his parents’ uncertain faces and his stomach flips anxiously. “They’re alone,” he says. “They’ve had no group for I don’t know how long — not for a while. I couldn’t forgive myself for leaving them there, even if they said no at first, I couldn’t give up on trying… I think they’re just scared to be around people again. I mean, we know what that’s like, right? Before we found Aaron and Eric and they brought us back here. They could have left us when we were scared to come but they didn’t. I’m not going to give up on this person either.”</p><p>Rick sighs. “You want to go back again, don’t you?”</p><p>“...Yes… I really believe I can warm them up to the idea.”</p><p>“We’ll see,” Rick says. “But before we can even think of bringing them back we have to deal with you first. Grounded. Three weeks. No leaving the house unless it’s for community shifts. No comic books, no friends when they’re in town. And when you’re home you’re on babysitting duty.”</p><p>Carl deflates but nods with acknowledgement.</p><p>“To your room, please, we need to talk in private,” Rick tells him and turns to Michonne.</p><p>Carl grabs his bag and trudges upstairs. A small round face peeks out from behind a door down the hallway.</p><p>“Are you in trouble?” Judith whispers.</p><p>Carl can’t help but smile a little. “Yeah, Jude. I’m in trouble.”</p><p>“Is it because you left?”</p><p>“It is,” Carl shares. “What should you remember?”</p><p>“Do what you say, not what you do,” she repeats.</p><p>“Good,” Carl says and goes into his bedroom and shuts the door. He drops his bag on the floor and sinks face down onto his bed.</p><p> </p><p>Halfway through his sentence, Carl sits bored in his room for a fifth night in a row, not even babysitting to keep him busy today — Judith is out with their parents, visiting with the rest of the family from Hilltop who are here overnight delivering and picking up trade.</p><p>Footsteps approach his door and a shadow shifts beneath it, like somebody sitting down.</p><p>“Your dad said I’m not allowed to see you, so… I’m not seeing you,” Enid says through the door, a wide smile clear in her voice.</p><p>Carl grins too and goes to his door and sits with his back to it. “If we’re found out you’re taking all the blame.”</p><p>“That’s fair,” Enid shrugs, “Maggie won’t ground me for this — well, actually she might. She’s pretty mad with you right now. Heard you left the safe zone by yourself.”</p><p>Carl rolls his eye. He isn’t surprised to hear Maggie’s just as upset as his dad and Michonne had been — her protectiveness over her family knows no bounds. “I met someone out there,” he tells Enid.</p><p>She hums unreadably. “You want to bring them back?”</p><p>“I mean yeah, but… mostly I want to see them again. If they don’t come back that’s their choice, but I don’t want that to mean I never see them again.”</p><p>“You like this person?” Enid sounds surprised.</p><p>Carl feels his face flush red. “I— I don’t know. Other than our short lived thing I’ve never had a crush on someone — there hasn’t BEEN anyone to have a crush on really. But I like them as a person, regardless of other feelings.”</p><p>“Do they like you back?” Enid teases.</p><p>“How should I know?” Carl scoffs and he can’t hide his laugh. “And who are you to ask that?”</p><p>“What’s that supposed to mean?”</p><p>“I don’t know, maybe you should go ask Margot when you get to the Kingdom tomorrow.”</p><p>“You think you’re funny,” Enid snickers.</p><p>“Yeah, a little.”</p><p>She rolls her eyes, and something occurs to her. “So… you haven’t called them by name or anything… is this person you like a boy? I know you haven’t really talked to your parents about that yet…”</p><p>“No, they’re… well, they’re not not a boy, but they’re also not not a girl. It doesn’t really matter though — I’d like them either way, boy or girl or neither or both.”</p><p>“You sound so smitten.”</p><p>“Shut up.”</p><p>Downstairs a voice that sounds like it could be Tara calls out. “Shit gotta go,” Enid says. “Good luck with your friend, and promise if you go out again you’ll be safe—”</p><p>“Always am.”</p><p>Enid’s footsteps bound away down the stairs and Carl is alone again. He doesn’t get up from the floor, instead he stares at the bare bones of his room; the bed, the nearly empty nightstand with a light and his knife on it, his dresser with a random collection of clothes, a desk against the wall where a few stacks of comics and two books usually resided, until they’d been confiscated for the duration of his grounding.</p><p>He looks at his blank walls and he thinks about their old house, the first home he’d ever known. He remembers the pictures everywhere on the walls and he remembers his mom tearing them down and throwing as many as she could fit into her bag before they fled the city.</p><p>He thinks he wants to put some of them back up. He imagines a towering stack of cd’s on the desk, a collection of his own. </p><p>Carl goes to his bed and he reaches a hand between the mattress and boxspring and pulls out a single cd case, The Beatles White Album. He’d hidden it before Rick came to confiscate all his entertainment — for some reason he couldn’t bear to think of not having it, even though he has no way of listening to it anymore. He opens the case up and slides the booklet out of the cover, and he thumbs through the pages slowly, memorizing each one, until a dark mark at the bottom of a page catches his eye. In the credit line for While My Guitar Gently Weeps, a single word is circled in black marker. Not just a word, but a name.</p><p>Lennon.</p><p> </p><p>Carl’s final week and a half of punishment fly by. Simply thinking of the name makes his stomach flip and his lips pull into a smile.</p><p>“He’s way too happy lately for being grounded,” Michonne comments to Rick one evening.</p><p>Rick shrugs. “I checked the stash of his comics and books and none are missing.”</p><p>“You think he thinks we’re going to let him go back to that town?”</p><p>“Don’t know. Are we going to let him?”</p><p>Michonne huffs and shakes her head. “It’s hard to punish him for wanting to do a good thing.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>All feedback is welcome and appreciated!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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